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Whitechapel () is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is in east London and part of the East End. It is the location of Tower Hamlets Town Hall and, therefore, the borough town centre. Whitechapel is east of Charing Cross.
The district is primarily built around Whitechapel High Street and Whitechapel Road, which extend from the City of London boundary to just east of Whitechapel station. These two streets together form a section of the originally Roman Road from the Aldgate to Colchester, a route that later became known as the Great Essex Road. Population growth resulting from ribbon development along this route, led to the creation of the parish of Whitechapel, a daughter parish of Stepney, from which it was separated, in the 14th century.
Whitechapel has a long history of having a high proportion of immigrants within the community. From the late 19th century until the late 20th century the area had a very high Jewish population, and it subsequently became a significant settlement for the British Bangladeshi community. Whitechapel and neighbouring Spitalfields were the locations of the infamous 11 Whitechapel murders (1888–91), some of which were attributed to the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. These factors and others have led to Whitechapel being seen by many as the embodiment of London's East End, and for that reason it is often used to represent the East End in art and literature. Brewers Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable, Russ Willey, Chambers, 2009
Landmarks include the Royal London Hospital and the East London Mosque.
Whitechapel takes its name from that church, St Mary Matfelon, which like the nearby White Tower of the Tower of London was at one time whitewashed to give it a prominent and attractive appearance. The etymology of the Matfelon element is unclear and apparently unique.
Around 1338, Whitechapel became an independent parish, with St Mary Matfelon, originally a chapel of ease within Stepney, becoming the parish church.
The area of the parish extended around 1400 metres from the City of London boundary, originally marked by Aldgate Bars around 180 metres east of the Aldgate itself, to vicinity of the junction with Cambridge Heath Road where it met the boundaries of Mile End and Bethnal Green.
The northern boundary included Wentworth Street and parts of Old Montague Street. The parish also included an area around Goodman's Fields, close to the City and south of St Mary's, the parish church.
The role of the Tower Division ended when Whitechapel became part of the new County of London in 1889, and most civil parish functions were removed when the area joined the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1900.
In 1965 there was a further round of changes when the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green and the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar to form the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The new borough of Tower Hamlets covered only part of the historic Tower Division (or Tower Hamlets). At the same time, the area became part of the new Greater London, which replaced the older, smaller County of London.
The mount was removed to allow residential development in 1807–1808.
In 2023 the old hospital building became the new Tower Hamlets Town Hall, replacing the Mulberry Place site in Poplar.
William Booth began his Christian Revival Society, preaching the gospel in a tent, erected in the Friends Burial Ground, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, in 1865. Others joined his Christian Mission, and on 7 August 1878 the Salvation Army was formed at a meeting held at 272 Whitechapel Road. 1878 Foundation Deed Of The Salvation Army accessed 15 February 2007 A statue commemorates both his mission and his work in helping the poor.
The population grew quickly with migrants from the English countryside and further afield. Many of these incomers were Irish or Jewish. Western Whitechapel, and neighbouring areas of Wapping, became known as Little Germany due to the large numbers of German people who came to the area; many of these people, and their descendants, worked in the sugar industry. The St George's German Lutheran Church on
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Writing of the period 1883–1884, Yiddish theatre actor Jacob Adler wrote, "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank. Was this London? Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s."Jacob Adler, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, . p. 232–233
This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888 the Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels.Donald Rumbelow (2004) The Complete Jack the Ripper: 12. Penguin Reference is specifically made to them in Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London, especially to dwellings called Blackwall Buildings belonging to Blackwall Railway. Such prostitutes were numbered amongst the 11 Whitechapel murders (1888–91), some of which were committed by the legendary serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper". These attacks caused widespread terror in the district and throughout the country and drew the attention of social reformers to the squalor and vice of the area, even though these crimes remain unsolved today.Nicholas Connell (2005) Walter Dew: The Man Who Caught Crippen: 7–55
London County Council, founded 1889, helped deliver investment in new housing and slum clearance; objectives which were a popular cause at the time.
The "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) became well known in Whitechapel – he was exhibited in a shop on the Whitechapel Road before being helped by Frederick Treves (1853–1923) at the Royal London Hospital, opposite the actual shop. There is a museum in the hospital about his life.
The Siege of Sidney Street (also known as the Battle of Stepney, after the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney of which Whitechapel was part) in January 1911 was a gunfight between police and military forces, and Latvian revolutionaries. Then Home Secretary Winston Churchill took over the operation, and his presence caused a political row over the level of his involvement during the time. His biographers disagreed and claimed that he gave no operational commands to the police, but a Metropolitan Police account states that the events of Sidney Street were "a very rare case of a Home Secretary taking police operational command decisions".
The Freedom Press, a socialist publishing house, thought it worthwhile to explore conditions in the leading city of the nation that had invented modern capitalism. He concluded that English poverty was far rougher than the American variety. The juxtaposition of the poverty, homelessness, exploitative work conditions, prostitution, and infant mortality of Whitechapel and other East End locales with some of the greatest personal wealth the world has ever seen made it a focal point for leftist reformers and revolutionaries of all kinds, from George Bernard Shaw, whose Fabian Society met regularly in Whitechapel, to Vladimir Lenin, led rallies in Whitechapel during his exile from Russia. The area is still home to Freedom Press, the anarchist publishing house founded by Charlotte Wilson.
On Sunday 4 October 1936, the British Union of Fascists led by Oswald Mosley, intended to march through the East End, an area with a large Jewish population. The BUF mustered on and around Tower Hill and hundreds of thousands of local people turned out to block the march. There were violent clashes with the BUF around Tower Hill, but most of the violence occurred as police tried to clear a route through the crowds for the BUF to follow.
The police fought protesters at nearby Cable Street – the series of clashes becoming known as the Battle of Cable Street – and Tower Hill, but the largest confrontations took place at Aldgate and Whitechapel, notably at Gardiner's Corner, at the junction of Leman Street, Commercial Street and Whitechapel High Street.
The Halal restaurant on the junction of St Mark Street and
Whitechapel remained poor through the first half of the 20th century, though somewhat less desperately so. It suffered great damage from enemy bombers during the Blitz, and from the subsequent Nazi Germany V-weapons attacks. The parish church, St Mary Matfelon, was badly damaged in a raid on 29 December 1940, a raid so damaging that it caused the Second Great Fire of London.
The remains were demolished in 1952. St Mary's traced stone footprint and former graveyard remain, as part of Altab Ali Park.Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (eds) (1983) "Whitechapel" in The London Encyclopaedia: 955-6Andrew Davies (1990) The East End Nobody Knows: 15–16
On 4 May 1978, three teenagers murdered Altab Ali, a 24 year old Bangladesh-born clothing worker, in a racially motivated attack, as he walked home after work. The attack took place on Adler Street, by St Mary's Churchyard, where St Mary Matfelon had previously stood. The reaction to his murder provoked the mass mobilisation of the local Bengali community. The gardens of the former churchyard were later renamed Altab Ali Park in his memory.
The Metropolitan line between Hammersmith and Whitechapel was withdrawn in 1990 and shown separately as a new line called the Hammersmith & City line.
In order to prepare for Crossrail, in January 2016, the old Whitechapel station was closed for refurbishment and modernisation work in order to improve services and increase capacity in the station.
The Royal London Hospital was closed and re-opened behind the original site in 2012 in a brand new building costing £650 Million. The old site was then repurchased by the local council to open a new town hall, replacing the existing Town Hall at Mulberry Place.
In March 2022, Whitechapel station signs had "হোয়াইটচ্যাপেল" in Bengali script installed. The British-Pakistani Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was "delighted" that the signage was installed ahead of Bangladesh Independence Day on 26 March. The installation was attended by Bangladeshis diplomats and Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Also in 2022 a historical marker was placed in Whitechapel, on the site of the former Adler House at the junction of Adler and Coke Streets by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation UK Branch. Adler House was named in honour of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Herman Adler, 1891–1911. The marker recognises the significance of Whitechapel as the centre of British Jewish refugee life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Since at least the 1970s, Whitechapel and other nearby parts of East London have figured prominently in London's art scene. Probably the area's most prominent art venue is the Whitechapel Art Gallery, founded in 1901 and long an outpost of high culture in a poor neighbourhood. As the neighbourhood has gentrified, it has gained citywide, and even international, visibility and support. From 2005 the gallery underwent a major expansion, with the support of £3.26 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The expanded facility opened in 2009.
Whitechapel in the early 21st century has figured prominently in London's punk rock and skuzz rock scenes, with the main focal point for this scene being Whitechapel Factory and Rhythm Factory bar, restaurant, and nightclub. This scene includes the likes of The Libertines, Zap!, Nova, The Others, Razorlight, and The Rakes, all of whom have had some commercial success in the music charts.
In 1985 this large, purpose built mosque with a dome and minaret was built in the heart of Whitechapel, attracting thousands of worshippers every week, and it was further expanded with the London Muslim Centre in 2004. History of East London Mosque East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre. Retrieved 24 April 2009.
A library, the Whitechapel Idea Store, constructed in 2005 at a cost of £12 million by William Verry to a design by David Adjaye, was nominated for the 2006 Stirling Prize.[4]
Whitechapel is also the setting of several novels by Jewish authors such as Children of the Ghetto and The King of Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill and Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld. Several chapters of Sholem Aleichem's classic Yiddish novel Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son take place in early 20th-century Whitechapel, depicted from the point of view of an impoverished East European Jewish family fleeing the pogroms. The novel Journey Through a Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff vividly describes Whitechapel and its Jewish inhabitants in the 1920s and 1930s.
The prostitute and daughter of a Luddite leader Sybil Gerard, main character of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel The Difference Engine comes from Whitechapel. The novel's plot begins there.
One of the episodes in Michael Moorcock's novel Breakfast in the Ruins takes place in 1905 Whitechapel, described from the point of view of an eleven year old Polish Jews, working with his parents at a sweatshop, who is caught up in the deadly confrontation between Russian revolutionaries and agents of the Okhrana.
Brick Lane, the 2003 novel by Monica Ali is based in Whitechapel and documents the life of a young Bangladeshi woman's experience of living in Tower Hamlets in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Whitechapel is used as a location in most Jack the Ripper fiction. One such example is the bizarre White Chappel Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair.Glinert, Ed (2000). A Literary Guide to London. London: Penguin. Page 256. It also features as the setting for the science fiction Webcomic FreakAngels, written by popular comics writer Warren Ellis.
Whitechapel is one of the worldwide locations referenced in Edith Piaf's song C'est à Hambourg [5], describing the harsh life of prostitutes.
In 2002, Whitechapel was used as the setting for a Sherlock Holmes film, The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.
Whitechapel serves as the setting for the television series Ripper Street, which aired 2013–2016.
Aldgate East station was originally 150 metres west of its current location and there was once an additional district line station immediately east of the modern East London Mosque called St Mary's (Whitechapel Road).
In the 1930s, Aldgate East station was relocated 150 metres east of its original position, meaning there would then be three stations in very close proximity; as a result, the railway economised by closing St Mary's, in the middle of the three stations.
Whitechapel is connected to the National Road Network by both the A11 on Whitechapel Road in the centre and, to the south, the A13 and The Highway A1203 running east–west.
Cycle Superhighway CS2 runs from Aldgate to Stratford on the A11.
Governance
Local council facilities will be grouped within the old Royal London Hospital building as a civic centre. The local library, now called an Idea Store is located on Whitechapel Road.
Culture
Whitechapel Road was the location of two 19th-century theatres: The Effingham (1834–1897) and The Pavilion Theatre (1828–1935; building demolished in 1962). Charles Dickens Jr. (eldest child of Charles Dickens), in his 1879 book Dickens's Dictionary of London, described the Pavilion this way: "A large East-end theatre capable of holding considerably over 3,000 persons. Melodrama of a rough type, farce, pantomime, et cetera" In the early 20th century it became the home of Yiddish theatre, catering to the large Jewish population of the area, and gave birth to the Anglo-Jewish 'Whitechapel Boys' avant-garde literary and artistic movement.
Demographics
The total population of Whitechapel in 2021 was 18,841.
Bangladeshis are the largest ethnic group in the area, making up 40% of the Whitechapel ward total population. The East London Mosque at the end of Whitechapel Road is one of the largest mosques in Europe. The mosque group was established as early as 1910, and the demand for a mosque grew as the community grew rapidly over the years.
Whitechapel Population 18,841 34.6% 51.3% 4.9% London Borough of Tower Hamlets 39.4% 44.4% 7.3%
In literature
Whitechapel features in Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (chapter 22) as the location of the Bull Inn, where the Pickwickians take a coach to Ipswich. En route, driving along Whitechapel Road, Sam Weller opines that it is "not a very nice neighbourhood" and notes the correlation between poverty and the abundance of oyster stalls here. One of Fagin's dens in Dickens's Oliver Twist was located in Whitechapel, and Fagin himself was possibly based on a notorious local 'fence' named Ikey Solomon (1785–1850).
In music
Whitechapel is the setting for the song "Fogwalking", a track on the 1970s album A Black Box, by English musical artist Peter Hammill.
Education
Transport
Current railway stations
Whitechapel has two underground stations: Aldgate East and Whitechapel. Aldgate East is served by the District line and the Hammersmith & City. Whitechapel is also served by these lines, as well by the Elizabeth line and the East and South London lines of the London Overground, soon to be renamed the Windrush line.
Historic railway stations
Whitechapel station was originally called Whitechapel (Mile End) to reflect its position just inside Whitechapel's boundary with Mile End and also its boundary with Bethnal Green.
Other modes
London Buses 15, 25, 106, 115, 135, 205, 254, D3, N15, N205, N253, N550 and N551 all operate within the area.
Nearest places
Notable natives or residents
In addition to the prominent figures detailed in the article:
Born in Whitechapel
Resident in or otherwise associated with Whitechapel
Future developments
Whitechapel Market and the A11 corridor is currently the subject of a £20 million investment to improve the public spaces along the route. The London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets & Newham are working with English Heritage and Transport for London to refurbish the historic buildings at this location and improve the market.
See also
Notes
External links
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